Why Feminism (Part 10)

Girls Will be Girls

That voice inside my head that used to tell me that I was overreacting never really went away, although now it usually just tells me that it’s far past time to let it go. It was a big deal at the time, but not anymore. It’s not like I was molested or raped, and it feels weird having my story sit alongside the truly horrific ones at le lyons.

But then I stop and remember one silly, but frightening fact: I didn’t stop checking the windows, or underneath my bed, until several months into college.

It wasn’t a gradual stop. One night I was glancing in the closet and under my bed before getting undressed, like I always did, and I finally realized what I was doing. And I never did it again. When my otherwise wonderful self-defense instructor warned us a year later to make sure our blinds were closed before dressing, even though almost no men lived on campus, I gave her a silent “fuck you” and ignored the vast majority of her “how to avoid rape” speech.

I spent my entire teen years checking for monsters under the bed. Monsters that I knew existed. Monsters that were far worse than anything I ever imagined as a child. I refuse to do it again.

I am a feminist in part because my brother, my sweet, adorable little brother, became a monster once - and I needed to know why. It drives me nuts when people say that feminists hate men and think they are born to be evil people because I know that I became a feminist in part because I love my brother so very, very much and I know that he was - and is - capable of not being a monster. He wasn’t one before, and he isn’t one now, but he was one once upon a time.

A part of me can understand that so many people think that the angry, man-hating straw feminist is all that feminists can ever be simply because I remember myself when I first began to identify out loud as a feminist and I was so very angry. I was angry with my brother, my parents, everyone.

But mostly I was just confused and frustrated. My parents love me. My brother loves me. My parents may not be radical feminists, but they are staunch liberals with strong feminist leanings. My brother is far from perfect, but he was, and still is, a loving, caring person. Even at the time he was more of a feminist than most of his classmates. So how did this happen?

Somewhere deep inside, I wasn’t buying that boys will be boys explained it all. I, after all, wasn’t obsessed with Newsies simply because it was about kid power or selling newspapers. I also began masturbating when I hit puberty at age nine and I had my first orgasm by fourteen (and I have a feeling it would have much been earlier if I hadn’t been so fucked up at the time – depression kinda ruins one’s sex drive). Since I’ve never even contemplated doing what he did, I smelled a rat. A big one. I just couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was.

I understood that part of my brother having ADD meant that he has poor impulse control, but mine wasn’t so spectacular either. Besides, there were all kinds of things he did manage to keep from doing, so why not this?

In the end, I submitted my story to le lyons' effort to fight sexual violence not only because I found writing this theraputic, but because all of my efforts to find answers to these questions of "why?" have illuminated the connections between my experiences and those of girls and women who have suffered from more explicit sexual violence.

Human Again

I don’t have any deep insights or sage advice, but I want to do my part and blog against heteronormativity, so instead I’ll share a story with you all about the night I started to care about gay rights.

I watched the Academy Awards from start to finish for the first time my ninth grade year. Not only had Beauty and the Beast (one of my favorite movies at the time*) been nominated for Best Picture but the Disney animators had done a special segment in which Beauty and Beast were to announce the winners of one of the Oscars. I was still in my “I’m going to be an animator for Disney!” phase, so there was no way I was missing this.

The biggest shock of the night (for me) was not, however, Beauty and the Beast losing (sniff sniff) out to Silence of the Lambs, it was learning that the man who was responsible for all of those wonderful lyrics in Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid had recently died of AIDS. Well, actually, I suppose you could say it was learning that he had died of AIDS and that he had been gay.

I had no hate for “teh gay” in ninth grade. Kids were not yet using “gay” as a synonym for “lame.” (At least not as far as I knew). I felt no real sympathy for non-straight people or interest in gay rights either. Ellen had not come out Rosie had not come out. Rock Hudson had come out years earlier, but I had no idea who he was. No one I knew was gay. Or, at least, I didn’t know of anyone who was gay.**

The only thing I really knew about gays was that gay men*** were at high risk for AIDS and a lot of them had died from it and were going to die from it. I knew this because I was in 6th grade during just about the only time in history that America has had mildly decent sex education for a significant percentage of it’s pre- and early adolescent students. In 1989 people were still scared shitless of AIDS, and people had been scared long enough to develop and implement a few sensible prevention strategies. Among them was sex education for children before they were likely to become sexually active. So, along with our brand-spanking new D.A.R.E. training, my classmates and I went through a several week course (parents were able to opt their kids out) on reproduction, sex, the various various ways to practice safe sex****, and what we could get if we didn’t practice safe sex.

Well, ok, that wasn’t all I knew about gay issues. I also knew that homophobes were stupid. I knew this not because I thought that being gay was ok, normal, or acceptable. I honestly thought very little about it. I knew this because, as part of our sex education course, my class watched a made for TV movie about Ryan White. I learned from watching the movie that the parents who were mean enough to call Ryan names in his own front yard tended to call him things like “faggot.” I didn’t need my teacher to point out to me how stupid this was. Furthermore, I had gone through major surgery myself in 1979, which meant I had just barely missed being at risk for contracting AIDS through transfusion - the same way Ryan White got it.

I knew that Ryan and I had something in common, but I felt only sympathy for, not connection to, the blurred faces of the terminally ill gay men in the video they showed us at school. That night though, when Howard Ashman’s “longtime companion“ took the stage – dressed all in black except for his bright red ribbon - to accept the award for best song, I finally had a face to go with all those blurred out pictures, and a small part of how I saw the world changed in a subtle but extremely significant way.

At the time, I saw Belle and, yes, even Ariel, as very feminist heroines. Punky was no longer on the air, Buffy did not yet exist, and Disney’s newest princesses were a lot better than their old ones (shell bras notwithstanding). They had nothing on Charlotte Doyle or Jo March, but compared to everything else on television or in the movies (for kids, I mean - this was the year of Fried Green Tomatoes, Thelma and Louise, and Silence of the Lambs), a heroine who reads incessantly and another who defies her father simply because she’s so damn curious***** seemed practically revolutionary. The lyrics the characters sang helped a lot in forming my opinion of them as feminist heroines. It’s hard to listen to

Bright young women
Sick of swimmin’
Ready to stand

several times and not see unsubtle hints of feminism, no matter how much heteronormative propaganda is thrown in for good measure.

That night, though, I began thinking of the implications of lines****** like

I don't see how a world that makes such wonderful things - could be bad.

And later, what it must have felt like to write songs like The Mob Song:

We're not safe until he's dead
He'll come stalking us at night
Set to sacrifice our children to his monstrous appetite
...
Kill the Beast!

and Human Again:

When I'm human again, only human again,
When the world once more starts making sense

knowing that one would almost certainly die soon from a disease that far too many people thought of as God’s punishment for being gay - a word many people are unable to differentiate from pedophile.

When Disney announced years later that they were extending health benefits to gay partners (and I consequently learned for the first time that they hadn’t before) I wondered what it must have felt like for Bill Launch to stand up there and accept an Oscar for a song his loved one had written – even as the company that had made money off the song acted as though such relationships either didn’t exist or weren’t worthy of respect.

When the idiot of the day complains about the campiness of Spongebob Squarepants, and warns parents not to let their children watch the show because it promotes ‘alternative” lifestyles, or when the Baptists began their boycott of all things Disney because the company finally extended health benefits to partners of gay employees, I always wonder if any of these people have ever really listened to the part in Beauty and the Beast where the mob cries:

We don't like
What we don't understand
In fact it scares us

I rather think the answer must be "no."

*I regret to inform you that you will never hear stories about my punk rock days. I am a complete geek, through and through.

**Turns out my elementary school vice-principal was gay. Which I did sorta suspect at the time since I knew that he had a male roommate, but lived in a big house up in the foothills and so likely didn’t have a roommate for financial reasons. They now have a ranch together in Montana. I kid you not. :)

***Lesbians seemed to be completely invisible

****Dental dams were not mentioned however, which is further support for Amanda’s argument.

*****Ok, yes, she was curious about a boy. But still, she was curious before the boy came along, too.

******This line is spoken, not sung, but it is spoken close enough to the beginning of one of the songs that it’s hard to imagine that whoever wrote the words didn’t mean for them to have larger significance.

I am a Mean, Evil, Terrible Person

So, I was reading a couple of Madeline books at work today to a bunch of kids and there was this one girl who kept asking all kinds of questions as I was reading the story. Which, in and of itself, was cool. This is storytime, not school; the kids are allowed to ask questions and interject comments as long as they are on topic and not too disruptive. I often ask questions to try and get the kids thinking and I'll even sometimes make sure they answer. It helps them become better readers and it makes storytime more interactive and therefore more fun for them (which also helps make them better readers).

It was cool until we got to the part in Madeline and the Bad Hat where Madeline tells Pepito that she isn't sorry at all that he got hurt because he deserves it for being mean to the cat. (A vengeful child is our Madeline, but a just one as well.) That was when the little girl - who looked to be about first or second grade, maybe kindergarten, but I doubt it - asked "There was a cat?" in a decently loud voice.

I turned and looked at her, and without thinking replied 'Have you been listening?"

Because, for those of you that haven't read or don't remember the story, the previous pages had been pretty much all about how Pepito had been dragging a sack ("What do you think is in it?" had been one of my questions to the kids) that made all the dogs in the neighborhood follow him (Madeline's teacher assumed it was food) and when he opened it up all the dogs descended upon the poor cat that had been trapped inside and Pepito was been caught in the middle (Darwin award, anyone?) and ended up needing to be rescued by Miss Clavel, Madeline's teacher.

Realizing what I had done I added. "There was a cat in the bag, that's why all the dogs attacked Pepito," or something like that.

Now, I don't feel bad for pointing out to the kid that she should have been listening to the entire story, not just some of it. In fact, I would have been doing her a even greater disservice if I had let the comment go. However, I am also quite aware of how intimidating I must be to six-year-olds, especially when I'm standing on a stage while I'm reading the stories.* There are a lot better ways I could have said that. Hopefully, next time I'll remember to say something more along the lines of "Yes, don't you remember the cat in the bag?" At which point the kid in question would have likely said "no" - but then I could have called on the other kids to fill her in. Which would have allowed me to both gently admonish Little Miss Oblivious and reward the other kids for paying attention.

But today - today I was a mean, evil, terrible person. :(

*I was standing and not sitting because one of my co-workers was standing on the stage dressed up as Madeline and I couldn't get around her to show the pictures to all the kids unless I stayed standing as well.

Why Feminism? (Part 9)

Bitch, with Honors

I graduated from high school and found myself at a small, very liberal, all-women’s college all the way across the country - for reasons that had a lot more to do with not fitting in throughout high school than anything else.

I came home that Christmas and was shocked to find that familiar routines and places no longer were. I came home with a semester’s worth of classes chock full feminist theory as only a women’s college can do it. I came home with a semester’s worth of female bonding and self-discovery.

I came home with my guns cocked and ready.

I don’t know how it started and I don’t remember much of what any of us said, but I remember a lot of yelling. I remember shouting louder than I ever had before. I shouted loud enough that my yelling alone shocked him. (Although I think the tears helped.) My voice was screaming all the “No!” s that had been hiding inside me for so very long and it was almost as if he could hear them in the loudness of my voice alone. I remember that it was never mentioned, but also I remember that what he did was sitting there in front of everything I was saying like a barrier or filter it had to find a way around or through first.

He was mad because all the girls were always doing better in school, all the teachers always thought all the boys were capable of bad things they never even suspected the girls of doing, and he was mad because despite all this, all everyone talked about was how to help girls.

I was mad because I had spent my entire high school years making myself invisible and he was part of the reason why. I was mad because all the “good” things girls were expected to be were never rewarded outside of high school – and all the things he complained about boys getting punished for, girls were punished worse for. I was mad because all this trust our high school teachers supposedly had in us never translated into any actual real power – in high school or out.

I was mad because the senior issue of the newspaper, the year I was on the staff, was turned into a bunch of rude descriptions of certain girls in school, and no one cared. Except the adults, who mostly seemed to care that sex was mentioned. I was mad because I was already starting to catch on, because of crap like this, to the idea that society only defines women’s sexuality by what (certain) men want it to be. Why else could use “you just don’t like having fun” as a defense against complaints from fellow students?

I was mad because one of my high school teachers had managed to convince me I was bad at math, and I still wasn’t sure how she did it, but now I knew she was wrong. I had the A+ in college calculus to prove it.

But most of all I was mad because he dared to compare having obscenities routinely yelled at you as you walked down the street to our high school having fewer junior ushers than daisy chain members. It wasn’t just that he was oblivious to the whole concept that maybe, just maybe, when one group is expected to be perfect in every way in order to stay safe from harm, it’s only logical that that particular group will have more straight A students. Mostly it was that if he still understood so little of what it felt like to always be judged by the size of your breasts, and to never feel safe simply because you have them, then he still didn’t really understand what he did to me. And that meant that he still wasn’t sorry, and that maybe he didn’t really care at all and never would again.

That was the first and last debate between us that I won, completely and unequivocally. Which was good, because I don’t think we could have been friends after that if I hadn’t. We began another uneasy peace the next morning, but this time it lasted.

I also started to trust my parents again, because that night my mom finally told my brother that he needed to shut the hell up and listen to me for once.

It was that night that I started to understand why this was all such a big deal in the first place, and that maybe I wasn’t crazy – or overly sensitive – after all.

Why Aren't There any Good Books for Pre-Teen Boys on Puberty?

While I'm not even going to try to all of dissect this* (via When Fangirls Attack) I would like to note that the author refers to Our Bodies, Ourselves as "voodoo pop."

Since it seems fairly obvious to me that The Care and Keeping of You is a direct descendant of Our Bodies, Ourselves, and since half the time the parents** asking me the question stated above tack on "like that American Girl book" at the end, I'd think the answer to the question in the title should be pretty obvious as well.

Anti-feminists and pseudo-feminists can rant all they want about brainwashing and radical feminists hating boys and men, I know who is really hurting the little boys that come into my store, and who is doing their best to help them - despite everyone else.

*I've been informed by a reader that the first link caused their browser to crash. It's rather large, so even if it doesn't it may take a while to load. It's a very long rant about feminism (and a lot of other things) by Dave Sim, creator and self-publisher of Cerebus, a long running graphic novel.

**I've said elsewhere that most parents asking me questions are mothers, and that when Johnny is having trouble reading, it's always the mother, never the father. Interestingly enough, I'd say about half the time I'm usually asked "the books on puberty for boys" question, both parents are present but the mother still usually does the asking.

Why Feminism? (Part 8)

I’m the Boss of You

Eventually it - he - stopped and life went back to normal for a while. Then my grandfather got sick and there were bigger problems than mine for the family to deal with – or ignore – as the case may be.

My brother spent most of my high school years telling me that he was going to run a big business someday and I was going to have to work for him. I wanted to draw for Disney? He was going to run it. I’m sure a lot of it was a result of his frustrations at being the youngest – and, quite frankly, being the ever-present punch line for certain older relatives who should have known better.

However, under the circumstances, I found his insistence that he was going to be in charge of me when we were older to be especially creepy. Besides, it never occurred to me to want to be my older siblings boss. Or the boss of all the kids that had ever teased me. I just wanted them all to go away. So I ignored him more and more.

He punched me once. Yeah, we fought all the time, but it had always been shoves and pushes, throwing and slapping. And we had always both been mad and worked up at the time.

He punched me in the stomach with his fist closed. His face and voice were angry but his body was calm. He warned me. He told me he could hurt me. I told him go ahead. I wasn’t mad, I was just hurt and confused, and I refused to show it. So he did. I managed to act calmly myself and keep from crying until I made it to my bedroom and closed the door. We didn’t talk for quite a while after that.

Why Feminism? (Part 7)

Do What I Say, Not What I Do

When I told my parents that he had never really stopped, they were mad - at me - for not telling them sooner. Only a little - upset, really, would be a better word - but still. I was just as shocked as when my mom had accused me of not living up to D.A.R.E. standards. Only this time I’d had time to think through how illogical it was for them to be mad at me for not doing something they had never asked me to do in the first place. Only I didn’t know how to tell them that, because they technically had asked me to tell them if it happened again. I hadn’t really believed them, though, partly because it was their actions, or lack thereof, that I had been listening to.

I must have said something, because I remember learning at this time that they had already taken him to see the pediatrician. I have vague memories of accusing them of not doing anything and my mom saying that wasn’t true, but that they didn’t feel (at the time) that I needed to know what steps they had taken. Another argument that I didn’t understand. Even when I didn’t get to know why my sister was grounded, I knew that she was. This time I already knew the why, it was the consequences that I couldn’t see or hear, so keeping secrets made even less sense. It suggested that the “steps” being taken didn’t include punishment, which in turn supported my fear that the only thing wrong about what happened was what he did, not what he did to me. I was crazy after all.

I still remember leaving the stilted conversation feeling as though I’d been wronged twice, first by my brother for treating me like a freak and not a sister, and then by my parents for not caring. I spent a year hating myself and all the people I’ve always cared about and trusted more than anyone else and he was taken to the doctor and I was ignored?

Deer in Headlights

Whenever anyone says something rude or stupid to my face, at work or elsewhere, I freeze up and can't think of a thing to say while I stare with my mouth hanging open at their audacity.

Which is why I love the internet, because it gives me a chance to stop and think. It also exacerbates my talent for rambling once I get going, but occasionaly I come up with good one liners that might actually be used in real life situations. More often I run across others making them, but since I don't think they'll mind if I steal them, and you are all welcome to use any of mine, here's a few for us all to remember:

***

From Diary of a Freak Magnet (via the 13th Carnival of the Feminists): When someone greets you with an innapropiate salutation (sweetheart, honey, etc.), greet them right back with another.

***

Whenever a guy interrupts an unrelated discussion to tell you are hot, or interjects similar sentiments at other innapropriate times, simply ask "Is that really relevant?" (As many slashdotters did).

When, because he can't answer no, even though the question is obviously rhetorical, he begins to say stupid things like:

"I don’t understand...I’m not allowed to think “Man is she hot and smart too!”?"

Explain that "Being distracted by attractiveness isn’t just a guy thing, but refusing to put a lid on it, in our patriarchal society, is."

When they start whining "but I was trying to treat women with respect" Simply reply:

"Do, or do not. There is no try."

***

However, as lost clown reminds us, when you run across yet another guy "sit[ting] with [his] legs as far apart as physically possible on public transport" please be kind and offer him some sympathy. Swollen Ball Sydrome must be painful as well as widespread.

Why Feminism? (Part 6)

Grown-ups are Stupid

(a short digression)

The year before all this started in was in sixth grade – the last year of elementary school - and my class was one of the first in our town to go through the D.A.R.E. program.

I cannot overemphasize how much of a flop it was.

The officer that came to teach the class taught us two things: 1) when you get to junior high, other kids will offer you drugs – possibly in the hallways between class, and 2) there’s all kinds of ways to say no.

There was some explanation as to why one should say no – most of it involving a former gang member coming in and telling us how scary gangs are and how we should never join one. For the most part, though, the class consisted of “here’s all kinds of ways to “just say no” because once you get to junior high bad kids will try you get you hooked on drugs and ruin your life.”

A few weeks before school got out, and not long after the assembly in which we demonstrated all the D.A.R.E. ways to say no, a kid brought something to school. It was white, powdery, and in a plastic bag. He told everyone it was drugs.* The teachers finally caught wind of it near the end of the day.

That afternoon my mom asked me if I had heard about it from other kids. I said yes, and waited for her to ask me if I was offered any so that I could dutifully say “no, but I would have just said no anyway.” Instead she exploded. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?! I can’t believe you didn’t tell anyone! What were you thinking?! Didn’t any of you listen to your D.A.R.E. officer?!” I’ve rarely seen her face that red.

The problem was, we had been listening. We’d just been listening to what wasn’t said as much as what was said. We were told that there were drugs everywhere you turned in junior high and that our job was to say no when (not if) we were offered any. Not only were we never instructed to tell a teacher or a parent when we saw drugs (much less heard rumors about them), but the idea of doing so seemed illogical. They must all already know that the drugs are there – they’re the ones that keep telling us they are everywhere.

*it wasn’t, of course. And the ironic part of this is that since D.A.R.E. taught us practically jack shit about any actual street drugs, there’s no way any of us that hadn’t already been exposed to drugs could have known this, even though it was apparently pretty obvious. If we had known the kid was lying, the rumor never would have spread throughout the entire school and it’s actually quite likely that someone would have tattled on him simply because he was being such a dork.

I’d also like to point out that the fake drugs incident was the closest anyone ever came to offering me drugs until fucking graduate school. When you walk around giving off a weird combination of I’m invisible/Don’t fuck with me/Goody-two-shoes vibes, no one comes up and asks if you want to smoke some weed.

Why Feminism? (Part 5)

My Superpower was Invisibility

So I learned to check the window before I took a shower. I learned to look under the bed every morning and night. I obsessed about the crack between the sliding door and the doorframe.

I’d always been shy around strangers and quiet around everyone but close friends and family. That year I learned how to hide myself even when I was alone in my own bedroom.

Family life outside my bedroom became a constant war interspersed with temporary cease-fires. Everyone pretended, of course, that nothing had changed and that our new fights were no different than the fights we’d always had. Everyone pretended that I was vigilant about my privacy simply because I was a teenager, and that’s what teenagers do. I knew differently.

When we redecorated my old bedroom after my sister left for college, my windows were left without blinds for several weeks. I nearly had a panic attack – until my parents duct taped towels over the windows. I threw a minor tantrum when one came loose and I couldn’t fix it.

The two-minute rides to our grandparents’ house became pure hell. In a car with five seats, two parents and three kids meant one of the two youngest always sat in the middle back. When I was lucky enough to get the window I’d practically sit on the door. When I had to sit in the middle I’d make myself as small as possible and spend much of the ride either crowding my older brother or kicking my younger one. He would cry foul and I didn’t know what to do because he looked genuinely confused, as if he didn’t understand that I didn’t want to touch him, and why. Sometimes our parents would tell me to cut it out. Every time his arm brushed mine I felt ill; when it touched the sensitive sides of my breasts I thought I’d puke. I learned to squeeze my breasts together using my upper arms as shields.

I drew less and less because the most vivid images in my head were dark enough to prompt a visit to the psychiatrist. They were charcoal on gray paper and they were full of men and boys, of people I trusted, staring and laughing and looking at me with hate and contempt as I huddled naked on the ground.

My social studies teacher mentioned one day that such and such percentage of kids our age had already contemplated suicide. I had never seriously tried to figure out how to kill myself, but I had spent a not insignificant amount of time thinking things would be easier if I would. I wasn’t sure if that counted.

Somewhere in the middle of all this my parents got a fucking clue, and when they asked me if everything was ok, my instincts for self-preservation kicked in and I said no. We never got into details, and I’m pretty sure I downplayed how often it happened, but I told them it - he - had never really stopped.

13th Carnival of the Feminists

is up at I See Invisible People.

Why Feminism? (Part 4)

Then Again, Maybe I Won’t*

So after the first few times I told them.

They were upset, but quiet. They said they’d take care of it. I wasn’t told how. It stopped - he stopped. End of discussion.

Except he didn’t stop for very long - and then I really didn’t know what to do. I was becoming angrier and angrier and I was scared that my parents would be as angry as I was – and of what they’d do to him because of it. At the same time I was scared that they wouldn’t really care at all – they didn’t care enough to make it stop the first time, or yell and scream when they found out. Why weren’t they mad? I didn’t think that I wanted to live if they didn’t care as much as I did about how much he was hurting me.

That year, I think the only people that I was ever angrier at than him were my parents. No matter how much I wanted to keep him safe, I also thought he deserved to be hurt for what he was doing to me, and the only thing that hurt more than his betrayal was my growing belief that our parents wouldn’t care enough about me to give him what he deserved.

I worried just as much that they’d think that I was being silly for taking this so seriously. He was only looking. It was creepy that it was me he was looking at, but he wasn’t doing anything to me, was he? It was a bad thing for him to do, but it wasn’t bad because of how it made me feel, it was bad because he shouldn’t be looking at his sister that way. It was natural for boys his age to be curious, they told me.

Besides, it was obvious that there was something wrong with me. What boy wouldn’t be curious about a freak like me? My breasts were already bigger than most of my sister’s friends.

*Yes, another Judy Blume book. I actually read this particular one about the same time all this was happening, and it was the only one of hers that I had a hard time finishing. When I got to the part where the main character spies on his friends older sister while she's getting dressed, I had to put the book down from just plain shock. At the time, it just made me think there must be something wrong with me after all for taking this all so seriously, since obviously it was normal. Now, it's just evidence of the pervasiveness of all this crap.

What Would Mommy Say?

To give everyone (myself included) a break from bad childhood memories, I thought I'd share some toddler cuteness.

***

My parents went to my sister's for Easter. Apparently, Precocious had tons of fun hunting easter eggs. Unfortunately, so did the dogs - they ate two of them. Cuddles tried to eat his with the shell intact, because that's what babies do, and stained his face blue as a result. Not content with merely hard-boiled eggs, Precocious asked her mom when she could have some of the candy in her basket. Silly Mommy said "After breakfast" and nothing more. After breakfast the grown-ups hear someone rustling around in the easter baskets and go to investigate, thinking that it's probably the dogs. It's Precocious, eating the biggest chocolate bunny in her basket.

***

One of the days she was there, my mom was down in the basement alone with the kids and Precocious starts jumping on the footstool.

"What would Daddy say if he saw you doing that?"

"Stop jumping!" Precocious replies, as she jumps up and down.

"What would Mommy say if she saw you doing that?"

"Get down, please." Precocious replies, as she jumps up and down.

The kid must have a thing for footstools because the last time she was here she kept laying on ours and sliding face first down to the ground.

Why Feminism? (Part 3)

The Pain and the Great One

Except he wasn’t a monster. He was my little brother. And I didn’t understand how he could do this to me or even why I suddenly hated the sight of him. Why I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him. Why I went from pushing him only when he was being especially annoying to shoving him away anytime he got close enough to touch.

All I knew was that he was my little brother and I was his big sister. It was my job to keep him safe from bullies and teachers and parents.

I was bossy and sometimes mean; but I wrote stories just for him and I made presents to give him on his birthday. I held his hand and kept an eye out for strangers while we waited for our parents to come back out from the pizza parlor. The only time that I ever really stood up to the mean twins up the street was when they tried to knock him off his bike while he was speeding downhill. My earliest memory is of guarding his crib while our mother walked up the street to meet our older brother at the bus stop on his first day of kindergarten.

He was noisy and annoying but he used to give wet sloppy kisses when he was still in preschool. When we were younger, he’d almost always rather play My Little Ponies with me than play by himself.

We spent most of our childhood fighting loudly and violently one minute, then spend the rest of the day conspiring together on our latest adventure. We built a time-traveling Dolorian out of a cardboard box. We climbed the red hills beside the soccer fields - and got yelled at for getting our uniforms dirty. We pooled our paper carrier money and bought our own tiny Christmas tree just for us that year – the year the den became my bedroom and I learned that my parents stayed up until nearly sunrise every Christmas Eve so that everything would be perfect in the morning.*

He wasn’t a monster, he was just my annoying little brother. He couldn’t mean anything by it. He wasn’t going to do anything to me. He was only nine.

I couldn’t tell our parents, because you don’t tattle on your siblings - unless you are mad at them, of course, or if they are doing something to you. But mad wasn’t the right word for how I felt, and he wasn’t actually doing anything, was he?

It was my job to keep him safe from bullies and teachers and yes, even parents. Only I didn’t know how to do that and keep myself from going crazy.

*for those of you keeping track, this is also the year after the infamous last visit to the cardiologist. I moved into the den a few months later.

Why Feminism? (Part 2)

Monsters

I had walked back into my room after taking a shower and was in the middle of getting dressed when I noticed him hiding under the bed. I was pissed, of course. I would have been only annoyed at him if he hadn’t messed up and stayed under the bed even after he realized I was getting dressed. So instead I was livid – and embarrassed. I yelled. He left – faster than a speeding bullet.

It didn’t occur to me until much, much later that he had timed it that way on purpose.

I would get out of the shower to find the bathroom window pulled down. (Can’t see through frosted glass). He would be perched on the tall planter beside the window, looking in.

I would find my blinds cracked open, and he would be outside, hiding.

And of course, always under the bed – like a childhood monster come to life.

A Day Late and A Dollar Short

The story of my life.

I started this on Monday for Blog to Raise Awareness About Sexual Violence Day and I just finished it a little while ago. When I started, I thought it would be a few pages long.

It's 14.

Once I started, I couldn't stop, and I didn't want to post it until it was done. (I'm still very nervous about posting it - you'll see why.) Since it is so very long, I'm going to post in in short chapters over the next few days or weeks, I'm not sure yet. I hope to fix my sidebars soon so that I have catagories, and make this it's own, but since I don't trust myself to do that anytime soon, I'll keep updating this entry with links to each chapter as it's published.

At least you all will have something new from me for a while, even if it is depressing.

Why Feminism?

Part 1: A Room of One's Own

Part 2: Monsters

Part 3: The Pain and the Great One

Part 4: Then Again, Maybe I Won't

Part 5: My Superpower was Invisibility

Part 6: Grown-ups are Stupid

Part 7: Do What I Say, Not What I Do

Part 8: I'm the Boss of You

Part 9: Bitch, with Honors

Part 10: Girls Will be Girls

Part 11: Speak

Part 12: But He Was Such a Nice Boy...

Part 13: Rape is a Weapon

Why Feminism? (Part 1)

A Room of One’s Own

It started one day when I was twelve. He was nine.

I had my very own room for the first time that year. My sister was leaving for college soon and our parents wanted her to have some time in her life when she didn’t have to share a bedroom with a little sister or a college roommate. So I moved out of the room I’d slept in since I was born and my parents converted the den into a makeshift bedroom.

My closet consisted of one of those metal organizers that you buy to put inside closets and my dresser was simply a bunch of plastic drawers. But it was mine. My adjustable artist desk sat between my half of the used-to-be bunk bed and the door to the hall. The frame around the sliding door to the living room (which was never opened) was decorated with wrapping paper that I had saved from my most recent birthday. Pictures cut out from the (very) few copies of Bop! that I had found the courage to buy were taped to the door. Christian Slater, NKOTB, Christian Bale, Cory Haim.

Yes, I admit it, I had (almost) no taste in junior high. (and apparently a thing for guys with "C" names)

"The Themes of ADD..."

"...inconsistency, and inconsistency again, creativity, provocative behavior, winning personality, varying motivation, exasperating forgetfulness, disorganization and indifference, underacheivement, impulsivity, and the search for excitement rather than discilipline."

from Driven to Distraction by Dr. Hollowell and Dr. Ratey

Aside from the "winning personality" (huh?) - yeah, that's me exactly.

So - sorry for the disapearing act.

I'd promise not to do it again, but there's a few other things I need to work on more - like getting my bills paid on time, getting a decent job, etc.

Thanks to everyone who kept checking in to see if I'd be back. I'll try to make the effort worth it in the near future.

Baby-sitters, Unite!

With the Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, My Little Ponies and even Trixie Belden making a comeback, I should have expected to see new editions of the Babysitter's Club on my shelves. I was not, however, expecting to see them re-issued in graphic novel form. It makes a lot of sense though. People can talk all they want about more boys reading comics than girls, and it may still be true, but as far as graphic novels go, most of the ones that are actually in the kids section are written either for girls or for both genders.* Again, this makes sense, since girls are avid readers but a relatively untapped market as far as comics go. Plus, boys are more sensitive to accusations of being to babyish, so they are even more likely than girls to want to read stuff that seems as though it's meant for older kids or grownups, so when comics are written exclusively for boys, they are often moved to the general graphic novel area for marketing reasons.

But, back to the BSC:

Needless to say, I just had to read it in that "can't look away" kind of way, so I grabbed a copy to skim through during my break....

...and was pleasantly surprised to realize that it was actually very good. The story is almost identical to the original, so it should appeal as much to girls today as it did to my peers and me when it was first written. The artwork was well done, uncluttered but very expressive. It reminded me a lot of Bone, actually. Both Jeff Smith (Bone) and Raina Telgemeier (BSC) tend to use a lot of curves and they both do a fantastic job of varying line thickness to help convey perspective, meaning and emotion.

I started reading The Babysitter's Club during the few years before I was old enough to babysit, and Kristy and the gang made baby-sitting seem fun and grown-up without being too unrealistic. For girls too young to be proper baby-sitters (the series main audience) it's both a fantasy and a positive (but glossed over) portrayal of girlhood that's grounded in just enough reality to make it easy to relate to. The part of the series that was the most unrealistic, of course, was it's hook: the idea that getting paid to watch ankle biters is a bonding experience among teen girls rather than a isolating job. (Now there's a sentence deserves it's own post.)

As I read the story of the club's creation for the first time as an adult, it also struck me that the "club" was neither that nor the business Kristy proclaims it to be, but a union.

The idea for the club comes from Kristy listening to her mom calling around town trying to find a sitter for her younger brother. It occurs to Kristy that she and her friends could do parents like her mom a favor, and themselves one as well, by creating an organization that parents can call in order to get access to several sitters at once. But unlike referral agencies or even partnerships, Claudia, Mary Anne, and Stacey do not work for Kristy, nor do the four founding members have people work under them**. The point of the club is not to raise capital for the club, it's to make finding work easier on the clubs' members. By the end of the first book, the gang has already choosen club officers, started setting rules for employers (no pet sitting, only baby-sitting!), paid voluntary dues to fund a social event, and created a skills training program (a notebook where the girls write down their experiences). Over the next few books they will start to set more guidelines for employers and (if I remember right) a minimum wage as well. The club does blur the line between a business and a union - the girls set up a summer camp for their regular charges at one point - but the main focus is on making sure that are treated well as workers and are able to find enough work when they need it. They are able to do this because they ensure a high level of competency among members and they band together to deal with problem employers. Which is very much what unions, especially the first unions of skilled workers, have always done.

It's interesting to look back on something that seemed so stereotypical at the time and realize that there was always just a little bit of subversiveness running through it the whole time.

*Which really makes me wonder how the industry is going to deal when all these girls grow up and start demanding more comics for them.

**When Mallory and Jessi join, they aren't afforded full status right away because of their age and inexperience, not because the original four are the partners and everyone else are employees. Abby, after all, becomes a full member right away. Which makes the club even more like a union for skilled labour, since that means Mallory and Jessi are apprentices.

On a Related Note

There are rights and wrongs
And in-betweens-
...
Why you do
What you do,
That's the point:
All the rest of it
Is chatter.
...
If the thing you do
Is pure in intent,
If it's meant,
And it's just a little bent,
Does it matter?
...
No, what matters is that
Everyone tells tiny lies.
What's important, really is, the size.

Only three more tries and we'll have our prize.
When the end's in sight,
You'll realize:
If the end is right,
It justifies
The beans!

Except it doesn't. Not because it's never ok to choose the lesser of two evils, but because if you try to argue that the ends justify the means, chances are you and I have a different definition of what the end goal is.

The point of fighting for abortion rights, after all, is not to win a victory over the Republicans, but to improve the lives of women and their families. So when the "means" increase the chance that women will be hurt the ends do not justify the means. And when you argue that it makes sense for men to support abortion rights because it may save them money, you are undermining the fundamental struggle. There are plenty of other ways for men to save money, after all, and very few of them make the world safer for women.

People who think that "women's issues" aren't "important shit" will never be better than the most dangerous of allies because the whole goal is to make people realize that "women's issues" (such as abortion rights) are "important shit."

It always amazes me how often this goes over people's heads. Sure we can work together on some things, like the USSR and the US during WWII, but we certainly aren't always going to work together. And such allies are welcome to say that we are working towards the wrong goals, but to then turn around and also lecture us on how we are stupid and naive and never going to get what we want if we don't always align ourselves with them is just fucking ridiculous.

It Wasn't the Storm That Did the Damage, it Was the Water

So I was rummaging through the archives of When Fangirls Attack and this post by kalinara caught my eye.

She makes a very good point...and yet not.

Her post is about the whole Women in Refrigerators phenomenom and how it's really just a consequence of the fact that (nearly) all the heros are male and so women are generally written as love interests, which tends to put them in serious danger from both evil villians and any writer with half a brain. She also rightly points out that when the hero is a woman, as in the case of Sydney Bristow, men tend to find themselves in refrigerators as well. Er, well, in bloody bathtubs anyway.

Kalinara concludes that the problem is not misogyny, but the lack of female heros.

Which, to me, is like saying the problem wasn't the hurricane....it was the flooding.

Misogyny and sexism may not be synonyms, but they're pretty damn close, and like floods and hurricaines, they tend to go together.

Now, I'm not an expert on comics; part of the reason I like Ragnell and kalinara's blogs so much is because I think that I would be a huge comics fan if I could find more comic books with characters and stories that appeal to me. However, much of what they complain about can be seen to a lesser extent in more mainstream entertainment. So I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that comics are often guilty of type casting women as either objects of affection or token representatives of their entire gender, which is something slightly different from love interests usually being female because the heros are often male. Women, after all, are also rarely villians*, annoying bosses, protoges, co-workers, and just plain friends.** They must nearly always be mothers, daughters, girlfriends, and occasionally sisters - or else Smurfettes. Quite often both. Unlike men, their most identifying characteristic is either their relationship to a man, often the hero*** - or the simple fact that they are "the other" as if no other character development is needed. The default for every character is "male" unless there is some overriding reason to make the character female. Since this reason is usually the need to put another character through the emotional wringer or create a foil for a male character, the male default alone greatly increases women's chances of finding themselves in a refrigerator, above and beyond the fact that this also means most heros are male.

After all, men may be dropping like flies around Sydney Bristow, but the women aren't faring much better. This isn't to say that male loved ones don't get killed off as well, just that a smaller percentage of non-evil male characters are stuffed in refrigerators because they are statistically less likely to be emotionally close to the hero irregardless of the hero's gender. A female hero may cause an increases in the number of bloody bathtubs, but doesn't mean that the refrigerators are empty as a result.

So what is the point of this rant? That when the root of the problem is not just that the industry doesn't care to market to women, but also that society has difficulty seeing women as people in their own right, there is a fine line between misogyny and sexism. After all, how far is it really from "seperate but equal" to "not quite human"? Women may not get stuffed in refrigerators because the writers' get off on doing so, but they are more likely to be put in harm's way because they are not seen as people in their own right, not because they have more value in the hero's eyes.

Sometimes it's easy to tell if it was the floodwaters that did the damage or if it was the hurricane itself. Sometimes it's not.

But it seems pretty clear to me that misogyny and sexism both wreak havoc in the comic book industry - and just about everywhere else.

*Actually, to my inexperienced eye, comics seem to do a better job with this than even movies do. However, the female villians also seem to usually be the love interests of the male villians, so....not all that all that much different after all.

**The quickest way to tell if this is what's happening? Checking to see if the women have relationships amongst themselves, and thus have conversations that develop the story in some way without these conversation always being about their personal relationships to men. Otherwise known as the Mo Movie Measure.

***This rule is slightly bent when the hero is female. In such cases female secondary characters are more likely to be two-dimensional, but they are often just more likely to be important simply because of their relationship to the hero. Note that this is different from being in the story because of their proximity to her (as a co-worker, rival, etc.). After all, how many of Sydney's bosses, co-workers, and adversaries have been female? And the three adversaries that were? One was supposed to set up some silly "rivalry" - as if either character would really care beyond getting the job done - another was somone pretending to be her friend, and the other was her own mother.

Chase Me, Mugsy! Chase Me!

As I mentioned to earlier, there is nothing Precocious likes better than to try to get her doggies to play with her. Usually she tries to accomplish this by running up to one of them, running a few steps away, and giving them the command "Chase me! Chase me!"

Needless to say, this does jack shit.

After a while my sister will take pity on her and order to dogs to "Come here!' while walking away from them. Since her dogs do like to play, but are simply (justifiably) wary of the bundle of energy and noise* that is my two year-old niece, they will start to chase my sister. She then pulls Precocious along with her, and the dogs will start chasing her instead.

They are mostly indoor dogs, so the chasing is mostly done indoors. It helps a lot that the downstairs rooms all connect together, with the stairway to the bedrooms in the middle, making a nice loop where Precocious can be endlessly chased to her heart's content.

Usually the dogs will tire long before she does, but you can keep her going and happy at that point by simply hiding behind corners and jumping out at her.

*By "noise" I do not mean anything so babyish as squeals interrupted by the occasional word. No, Precocious mostly talks in multiple word phrases - often complete sentences. The constant noise is her maintaining a running commentary of whatever she happens to be doing at the moment, whatever anyone in her line of vision happens to be doing at the moment, and questions about the whereabouts of anyone not in her line of vision at the moment.

Some Thoughts on Chivalry

Andrea has it right.

For evidence I submit my one of my co-workers, who pulled a chair out for me today, calls me "lady" (which I hate, btw) and, according to others, always opens doors.

I've also had to repeatedly tell him to stop ordering me to smile. (And I can tell he still doesn't get it, he just too scared of pissing me off.) He's so freakin oblivious that he started to push the chair in for me - before I started sitting down.

He also came into to work an hour late earlier this week, on the day our district supervisor came to visit, and responded to her question with "Yes'm" in front of our store manager.

We do not live in Oklahoma.

Gee, I can't fathom why he doesn't get the hours he requests.

(He is, of course, not the only one who holds doors open for others. Since we are often going through doors that require codes with stacks of books or huge carts, everyone holds doors open for each other. Even I do it, and I'm generally so lost in my own thoughts half the time it's a wonder I notice the customers. But, of course, he's being "gentlemanly" while my female co-workers don't even get "nice" points for doing the same.)

Lady,

If you can't read your kid's mind, how the hell do you expect me to?

Promises, Promises

I promised cute stories, so here they are:

Precocious has decided that the shed behind my grandmother's house is a barn. We discovered this because she kept talking about "animals" when we were in the backyard. This is nothing new, as the zoo is her favorite place in the world, so it took a while before we started playing along.

"Where are there animals?"

Precocious toddles over to the shed, but stops a few feet away. "In there," she points. "Animals in there."

"What kind of animals? Are there Hippos in there?" My sister is obsessed with Hippos and so my neice talks about them a lot too.

"No, no Hippos. Dogs." Precocious, on the other hand, is obsessed with dogs. Her family has two small (but not yippy) dogs that she constantly tries to get to chase her (speaking off cute stories...).

"There are doggies in there?"

"And cats."

"Oh, wow, doggies and kitties, anything else?"

"Horsies."

And then the light bulb goes off in all the adults' heads - aha! she thinks it's a barn.

"Let's go see the animals!" Precocious exclaims - cracking us all up because the inflection in her voice is so damn cute.

"Um, no sweetie....we can't....the animals are sleeping. They're taking a nap."

The second time we visited my grandmother, Precocious kept inching closer and closer to the doors and tried to peer in the cracks. I think I repeated the line about the animals "sleeping" a dozen times.

Grammar and Sexism: Why the Little Things Matter

So, I know there are all kinds of things that are more immediately life threatening than sexist language, but this is my space to bitch and this has become one of my top ten pet peeves, so listen up:

Lesson #1

"Woman" is a noun, not an adjective; therefore the phrase "a woman doctor" is ungrammatical.

This particular example of bad grammar is also insulting. Whether you mean for it to be or not, the manner of grammatical error ensures that it is. Like the ungrammatical placement of "boldly" in "To boldly go where no man has gone before" using "woman" rather than "female" places the emphasis on the modifier. She is no longer a doctor who is female, she is now a woman who is a doctor. Plus, it sounds odd (as it should) and makes the basic premise of a female doctor sound odd as well.

So, unless you actually mean to bring people's attention to the fact that a woman is a doctor, rather than simply clarify that the doctor in question is a woman, knock it off.

(Try saying "man doctor" if you don't believe me, and then think about how often that particular phrase isn't used while the other one is used quite often - and why that might be so.)

Lesson #2

The fact that "female " and "females" can be used as nouns as well as adjectives does not makes them the interchangable with "woman" and "women."

"Female(s)" can be used to mean female(s) of any species, but women are always both adult (physiologically if not legally) and human. Using "females" when talking about pick-up lines and dating norms is not exactly ungrammatical, but it's certainly less precise than "women." It's not as if you were going to proposition a cat, a dog, or an insect (or, one would hope, a girl so young "woman" is physically innaccurate). Using "female" when "woman" will work just as well is insulting and dehumanizing.

So, unless "female(s)" is more accurate than "woman(en)" - or unless you mean to convey the idea that women are sub-human - knock it off.

Lesson #3

Language does matter: many sexist arguments reveal a belief that women are not simply different from men, they are less than them - but people often get away with such arguments because they choose their words carefully.

The purpose of South Dakota's recent abortion ban - as written in the law itself - includes "fully protect[ing] the rights, interests, and health of the pregnant mother." Rep. Roger Hunt explains that he supports the ban, however, simply because "the goal is to prohibit the killing and the termination of life of all of those unborn children." "The unlawful killing of one human by another" seems to very much fit pregnant women who abort, according to Hunt's words - but who ever heard of a murder law written to protect murderers?

This is why South Dakota plans to punish doctors who perform abortions, but not the women they claim murder their own unborn children. The only way these different treatments under the law can be anything other than a contradiction is if one believes that women are either children or not quite human - and therefore not subject to legal prosecution. Instead the legal ramifications for performing abortions are structured as though all abortions are a form of criminal malpractice perpetrated on the mother, not the "killing...of unborn children." Digby, of course, says it best: "If fetuses are human and have the same rights as the women in whom they live, then a woman who has an abortion must logically be subject to the full force of the law. It would be a premeditated act of murder no different than if she hired a hit man to kill her five year old. The law will eventually be able to make no logical moral distinction. Is everybody ready for that?"

In this the authors of South Dakota's recent abortion ban have something in common with many murderers: the need to dehumanize the person they are hurting. Unlike pro-choice advocates who are actually quite up front about the belief that they don't consider a fetus to be quite a person (even though such a belief is often beside the point in a society that does not legally compell parents to donate blood to their own children) the South Dakota legislature cannot admit in clear language that they consider women incapable of being moral agents. Instead they abuse language in order to justify treating woman as children without being so blatant as to call for the reppeal of the 19th amendment.

Review

Using "woman" as an adjective is stupid and rude.

Using "female" where "woman" would work just as well is dehumanizing.

Language is purposely abused even in legal settings - so don't tell me what you say doesn't matter. They can get away with the subtle misuse of language because you get away with even the blatant stuff.

I Love Cordless Phones

Time: Sunday night, an hour before closing

Location: The messiest part of the whole store - the toddler books

I bend down to straighten up the bottom shelf and rrrrrip - I feel and hear my pants split along the crotch seam. I checked and yes, the rip was very noticable. My underpants also happened to be a nice bright shade of green while the pants are/were beige.

I've had these pants for about a year and I wear and wash them about twice a week because they are comfy and I can't really afford new (sturdy) clothes that fit the dress code. I had noticed they were wearing thin "down there" - I have no idea why some of my pants insist on doing that - but I stuck my head in the sand and wore them anyway for the reasons listed above.

Luckily, all I had to do was dial "245" and ask a co-worker to bring me my sweater to wrap around my waist. Immediate problem solved.

Unfortunately, I that meant I needed to go shopping today and haven't had much time to blog against sexism. This is why I'm always late - because I always procrastinate and then something always comes up. :(

Awww..I'm Blushing

I was absolutely certain that I would have posted tons of stories by now about how adorable my neice and nephew are.

But no, the cuteness I feel that I absolutely must share tonight involves my (now adult) younger brother. Some of his old school papers were discovered in the garage today and, apparently, at age twelve he had to write one of those "where I'm going to be in 20 years" essays and he not only decided that he was going to have 3 girls and 1 boy, but his firstborn child was going to be named after me.

I suppose that means I have to buy him something more than just a little stuffed koala for his birthday tomorrow.

*I do warn you though, my neice and nephew are adorable - frighteningly cute stories are forthcoming.

So Mad I Can't See Straight

So I made the mistake of reading some of the actual comments Twisty cites and I'm very very tempted to write to a bunch of them and tell them off. Apparently the assumption (by every single damn doctor on the forums) is that grandmother is wanting the teenagers in question to see a female ob/gyn because she doesn't trust the doctor - the very simple and obvious idea that a girl that age may not be confortable being so exposed to a strange man does not even enter into their minds. The children's comfort level is completely inconsequential as to not even be worth considering.

I really need to finally see an ob/gyn. It's something I've put off for far too long because of a combination of lack of health insurance and bad doctor's experiences. (Seriously, do you think my mother was going to be able to drag me to see on after what I was like after just visiting the cardiologist?) I was going to request a female ob/gyn before, but not be adamant about it. These assholes have changed my mind - male ob/gyn's seem to be dominating the discussion and be the ones making the most callous and self-centered remarks. Now, I'm going to be damn certain it's a woman I see - and if she doesn't make me feel comfortable enough, screw the co-pay, I'm ending the check-up and scheduling a new visit with a new doctor.

I'm Not Going Back

I was half-joking when I said that after my first day of junior high, because I knew there was no way it was going to happen, but I was dead serious when I said that after what turned out to be my last visit to the heart specialist.

I was in sixth grade and had not only already started wearing bras, but I had already started wearing proper bras. None of this "training bra" shit for me - during the short time that training bras would have made sense, my mother knew that it wasn't worth the fight to convince me to wear them. She made me wear undershirts for a while instead - until there was just no avoiding the bra.

I was never the kind of kid that wanted to grow up quickly to begin with; the fact that all this new stuff seemed designed solely to make me miserable just made me even more dead set against it. It was bad enough that I was the nerd who appropriately wore glasses, now I was the freak whose face looked like a pizza and I had to deal with these...things...that made doing all the stuff I loved feel weird. Running suddenly felt odd; the bras that rubbed me in all the wrong places never seemed to do anything about all the flopping and bouncing around. Sometimes, it just plain hurt. I nearly broke into tears the first time I tried riding one of those stupid amusement park rides that rock you back and forth and then upside down after I hit puberty. It hurt to have that much force pull on those stupid things that were now attached to me. It was even more humiliating that I seemed to be the only one of the girls who was bothered by this.

I would have done anything to make them and those stupid cramps and all the mess that came with them go away forever.

But, no, instead I had to go to the doctor's and go through the normal routine of taking my shirt off in front of strangers and have them stick all kinds of gunk and wires all over these...things...I had suddenly acquired. Only now it would really be strangers because the cardiologist who had seen me every year since I was born had retired and I had a new doctor that I had never even met before.

I knew it wouldn't kill me simply because I wished so hard that I could die instead of going.

Obviously I survived; in fact, it ended up not being as scary as I thought it would be. But it was nearly as humiliating, and I went from being slightly frightened of the people who did these strange things to my body to hating them with a passion I hadn't realized I was capable of feeling. Even worse, I hated myself and my body even more than I had before. I had always been somewhat proud of what it could do from the time I was old enough to understand how amazing it was that I was still alive to begin with. Now, though, my body seemed to be betraying me in all kinds of new ways - and everyone else seemed to either be unconcerned or view this as a cause for celebration - or worse.

Suddenly, my mother cared more about what I wore, how I sat, and all kinds of other silly things than I ever though possible. One particular evening at a block party was spent arguing about the fact that one of the straps of the huge tank top I wore over my suit kept falling off my shoulder. I was vaguely aware that there was something "wrong" about appearing that way in public and that now that I was older it involved more than just looking "presentable." I though it was a stupid thing to worry about though, and I wasn't doing it on purpose (at first) and I decided that I liked the way it felt anyway. (One of the upsides of reaching puberty that I didn't recognize as such for a long while was that I became even more aware of how things felt against my skin.)

As a even a little girl you are so often told that your body is not for doing things, it is for looking pretty. When you reach puberty this only intensifies, and at twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, you just want someone to empathize, not to tell you that it will get better one day or that you will learn to like how everyone is treating you and looking at you.

The worst consequence, in my opinion, of our idolization of youth, is that women are most exposed to the male gaze at the time when they are still girls and in fact are even more vulnerable to other opinions than they were as young girls. Just at the time when I needed to be looked at with more tolerance, compassion and empathy than ever, I was more objectified than I ever have been and likely will be. I knew all this was happening too, but I didn't have the experience or language to analyze it beyond feeling that it was terribly unfair and terribly frightening. Even now it's hard to explain to people that what made me mad about the boys finally letting the girls play touch football in sixth grade (after years of being shunned from most pick-up games) - and the girls wanting to play (after years of not having any female friends willing to play anything other than handball) - was that my peers felt it was ok to use each other this way, and that it was obvious that so much about the dynamics were terribly unequal (it's not like the boys were joining in games of jump rope or sitting down and talking with us). It wasn't so much that I felt like anyone was outright telling me that I couldn't play (although that did happen), but that everyone was making it very clear that the only thing I they wanted girls to contribute was our looks. In fact, it was the first time that it was made clear that our looks were important because it made boys want to do things to us - in this case touch us - not just look at us and certainly not do anything with us - they didn't seem to want us to touch them and we certainly weren't supposed to want to do that anyway.

What made situations like that last doctor's visit especially hard is that I knew that not only was I supposed to be pretty - and yet I was deeply ashamed because I felt as though I wasn't - but that I also knew that I was supposed to be modest, and that the latter was even more important, if that's possible. That stupid strap was somehow vitally important to my mother - and yet I was expected to take my whole shirt off for a complete stranger, showing him parts of me so indecent that they must be covered up with a special type of undergarment, and do so without complaint. I was supposed to play touch football with the boys, and yet not only was I not supposed to care that they didn't actually want to play with me, but I was somehow supposed to like their self-centered gaze and yet not want to be touched. It was so completely illogical and confusing that I just gave up trying to figure it all out and decided that everyone was just plain stupid.

When I told my mother that I wasn't going back to the doctor's she agreed - she knew how upset the last visit had made me, and there had not been anything wrong with me in a decade. When the call came next spring reminding her to make the appointment, she just ignored it. Soon after, I decided to ignore the boys - and girls - who only seemed to care what I wore or how I looked. They had never been terribly nice to me anyway. It took a lot longer, unfortunately, to learn to be not ashamed of my body - to enjoy it and my sexuality and to not compare my body to some unrealistic ideal. In fact, these are things I'm still very much working on.

Blogging Announcement

My sister, niece and nephew are coming to visit for several weeks starting today and my brother and his girlfriend are coming to visit for one of those same weeks, so things are going to be busy busy busy in the Kingdom of Westmark for a while. Blogging will be light to non-existent as I try to spend as much time with my family as possible. I promise that I will be back and I promise to try to check in every so often.

What Princesses Are Made Of

For various reasons, some of the junk mail that comes to the house is aimed at parents with small children (even though none live here). One of the most recent was an invitation to join the Disney Princess Book Club. As anyone with eyes can see, I like pink. As anyone who knows me can tell you, I do not have an aversion to "girly" things. The Disney Princess line has always annoyed me a little bit though, and reading the promotional material, I realized why.

When I was a kid, my parents signed up for a book club called ValuTales. Every month for a few years a hardback book about some famous person and the important characteristic their life exemplified would come via the US Postal Service. Most of the books were about men, but there were plenty about women. The values that were praised ranged from Florence Nightingale's "Compassion" to Sacagawea's sense of "Adventure", from the the Wright Brother's "Patience" to Alexander Graham Bell's "Self-discipline". The one I remember best was about Nellie Bly. I was absolutely fascinated by her courage, self-confidence, and daring.

They were very much "pre-PC" and being the commie loving liberal that I am, I think they were worse off for it. The values tended to divide along gender lines (Harriet Tubman was "Caring" and Nellie Bly was "Fairness" while Jefferson was "Foresight" and Edison was "Creativity"). I understand that discussing Helen Keller's socialism would be problematic when it comes to nine-year olds, but there's no excuse for Nightingale's story to not mention her role in furthering the study of statistics and how her work in that field was instrumental to her humanitarian work. I'm also fairly certain that Columbus was not the best choice for "Curiosity" - surely there were plenty of better options for that one.

Compared to the current Disney Princess series though, they were practically revolutionary - it seems as though we've taken several steps back.

The literature for the Disney Princess series tells parents that

...each all-new, character-building story asks your daughter “What would a princess do?” when faced with a challenging situation...by following their example, your daughter will begin to understand that a true princess should be kind, polite, and respectful at all times.

Apparently princesses do not need to be adventurous like Sacagawea (no wonder why Pocahontas sucked) know the value of "Laughter", like Lucille Ball, or even know the importance of "Learning", like Marie Curie.

If good manners is all that it takes to be a princess, count me out. My favorite ones growing up were daring and courageous as well. When you've got that many people counting on you, you've got to be. Even if it means giving your prince the boot for being a twit.

Gibberish

Why am I having so much trouble understanding customer's questions lately?

Am I losing my hearing or are they just speaking gibberish?

You'd think it would be simple. "I want a book by (blah blah) and I think it's called (blah blah)." Instead, I get Mr. I Need to Buy the First in a Series that I Can't Remember Anything About.

Me: Have you been helped?

Mr. INBFSICRAA: No. I'm looking for a book by Forsythe.

Me: Do you remember the author's first name?

Mr. INBFSICRAA: No.

Me: Do you know what the book is about?

Mr. INBFSICRAA: No. It's a series though.

Me: Do you mean the Forsythe saga?

Mr. INBFSICRAA looks at me like I'm crazy: No. I think her first name is Kate.

(I do a phonetic search for Kate Forsythe and come up with a bunch of science fiction books by an author named Kate Forsyth.)

Me: Do you know which one you are looking for?

Mr. INBFSICRAA: The first one.

(Our stupid database/search engine doesn't have a spot for the series title or number except in the summary that you have to click on the book to get to, so I try the one with the earliest copyright date and when that doesn't help I have to through them one by one. Mr. INBFSICRAA starts to get impatient.)

Me: Do you think you might recognize the title if I read them to you?

Mr. INBFSICRAA is incredibly impatient and so I just turn the screen around even though that's not actually faster because I still have to scroll for him. He does recognize it - only we don't have it at the moment because someone apparently came in and bought up all this author's books recently.

If I were a better person or a better employee, I'd feel much more sympathy for Mr. INBFSICRAA.

Or maybe I would just feel more sympathetic towards him if I actually believed that he didn't remember that it was fantasy/scifi, seeing as how that bit of information was more useful than the fact that it was part of a series and would have saved us both time.

Eighth Carnival of the Feminists is Up!

Thanks to Emma and Emmy at gendergeek.

The Fuck?

From the In These Times article on progressive blogs:

(hat tip to Amanda, who has a quote)

Stoller does not think that it’s important for blogs to reach a less-affluent audience: “Not everybody has to be part of that conversation. If someone wants to have access to those discussions, they should be able to do that. But for the most part, people—like that person working two shifts—will go on with their lives knowing that good people are making good decisions and policies on their behalf.”

Um, ok.

And the colonists were just ever so happy knowing that the "good" aristocrats were "making good decisions and policies on their behalf."

Listen people, democracy is about more than just voting.

It's one thing to resign yourself to the fact that life isn't fair, and equality is simply something we all strive for - or admit that some people are more interested in politics than others. It's quite another to be unconcerned that "that person working two shifts" is not part of the conversation.

Does Stoller even understand the point of representative democracy, or does he think it's all just good and dandy as long as everyone has the right to vote? If this is the face of progressive politics in America, no wonder we're losing.

And, of course, I just loved this:

The Washington Monthly profile of Moulitsas included a revealing quote, in which he expressed disappointment at not being able to fulfill his dream of making it big in the tech industry back in 1998: “Maybe at some time, Silicon Valley really was this democratic ideal where the guy with the best idea made a billion dollars, but by the time I got there at least, it was just like anything else—a bunch of rich kids who knew each other running around and it all depended on who you knew.”

Yes, I want the person "leading" the grassnets to be the kind of person that not only buys into the American Dream as personified by Bill Gates, but who thinks that has shit to do with democracy rather than meritocracy. No wonder he's such an ass.

No, Wait

This one is my favorite.

Or maybe this one.

No, definitely this one. (Yeah...I'll check the back for you, you just wait here.)

Awesome!

A comic strip about a library with regular book reviews on Sundays!

This is my fave strip so far. And I soooooooo want this shirt. Hmmmm...I might even be able to convince my manager to let me wear it at work. Hey! she said we could wear relevant t-shirts during events.

hat tip to Scott Westerfeld - whom I'm having a serious literary crush on after having finished the first Midnighters book. I'm almost feeling guilty that it was a strip. (I'll just have to hand sell a few to make up for it).

Little Girl Dresses

I loved dresses when I was little – especially the princess style dresses with poufy skirts. For some reason, whenever I’d think about that time, I used to imagine myself liking them only because of how they look; that I adored them so because they were pink and I was a girly girl – according to my mom and sister.

It’s amazing how much crap I’ve simply accepted as true because it’s conventional wisdom, despite considering myself a feminist from practically grade school on.

I did indeed like dresses because of how they looked, and in turn how they made me look, but when I actually stopped and thought about it the other day, I realized that I also loved dresses because of how they felt. Ankle length dresses may not have been made for doing cartwheels in (as I found out when my mother relented and let me wear one to school in third grade) but little girl dresses with princess skirts are not made for sitting sedately either. They are made for skipping, spinning, twirling, and prancing about the room – all of which may look cute, but just as importantly feel different in a poufy skirt than they do without. The weight and movement of the skirt emphasizes your own actions and makes it that little bit more fun. Like the difference between good food that’s hot and good food that’s no longer warm.

But when little girls like the poufy pink skirts we buy for them, we assume they like them for the same reasons we buy them – because we think they are cute. That’s a pretty arrogant assumption, but one that society often makes when it comes to kids and women - so girls get it the worst.

Parental attention does have a lot to do with it – that was easy enough to see with my younger cousin. Her father would have thrown a fit if his son had played with her dolls but loudly found her adorable and perfect whenever she was dolled up in her party dresses. Kids aren’t stupid – even at three and four – and so, of course, she loved her dresses.

But whether or not one is a kinesthetic learner has something to do with it as well – in my case, at least. And yet we are so inundated with messages about what girls and boys like – and why they like them – that even as feminists it’s hard to cut through the bullshit and consider the question from the little girls point of view.

Face Up and Sing

(I'm a crappy singer,
but I should have
joined in a long while ago,
so here's my song)

Science has always been magical to me. Launching rockets, watching Mr. Wizard, picking things out to dip into the liquid nitrogen my dad had left over from his lecture - how could these things not be fun? Science has also always been one of those things that I identified with. With a physics professor as a private tutor, I was always one step ahead of the game in school and (almost) always brought home the blue ribbon from the yearly science fair.

Even more, it was my childhood. Tagging along with Dad to work either meant getting to go to star-gazing parties or getting to play with all the toys in his lab. Plastic sit-and-spins were for kids not lucky enough to have a dad with a metal one for demos, lab carts were made for climbing on and racing down the aisles, and begging incessantly and jumping up and down was the surest way to get to play with the "bumper cars".

At some point I learned, though, that others did not see the scientist in me, and it made me doubt what I had always known. My parents kept me out of Earth Science in middle school, and I was uncertain as to why. High school lab partners would ignore my suggestions, run to the teacher for help, and come back with exactly what I had just said. While working as an intern one summer for LLUMC, I was regulated to filing for the week we were to spend helping build the electronics for the new proton accelerator. I knew that science belonged to me in a way that it didn't belong to most girls, but I learned that it was not mine in quite the same way that it belonged to guys like my dad. Girls who see magic in the fact that oranges are literally made out of sunshine, rain and wind don't mix well with the serious face of science. They are, however, tolerated - even at times revered - in the arts and humanities.

Thankfully, the men and women who carry on Mary Lyon's legacy saw my ACT scores, GPA, and internship, and saw something different. They saw a young woman who would fit in just fine at a women's college where quarter of the students major in the natural sciences and more than a third of them in the social sciences. My mother, to this day, insists that I was "recruited" and the generous financial aid package I received was a direct result of my scientific successes. She may very well be right for, I must admit, if that was the intent, it was a success - although a qualified one. I entered as a freshman who was too uncertain of her abilities to risk taking both math and science during the same semester - and left with a degree in physics, cum laude.

The question then becomes, why am I no longer in science?

The full answer to this question is painful because it means talking about my failures and shortcomings, real and imagined. It means not only acknowledging that I've often refused to talk about some of the ways in which I've been treated because I've always thought it was partly my own fault, but also admitting that my biggest problems have been a lack of social skills and courage. It means exposing my vulnerabilities even though my extreme sensitivity has always been one of my most persistent faults.

But it's also well past time I spoke up, and important that I do so. I can no longer stay silent in the face of the many ignorant comments like those found at the slashdot thread Emma so eloquently dissected.

For example:

What, really, is the objective value in trying to convince women to do things they are freely choosing not to do?

The arrogance of this statement is that it assumes that women like me are "freely" choosing not enter into tech, math, and physics based soley on our relationship to the actual field of study. Nothing could be further from the truth in my case. Such assumptions are doubly arrogant considering the fact that the same commenter also wrote:

If the message that boys receive is "scientists and engineers = female", are the already underperforming boys going to be more or less motivated to study math and science?

Which smacks of the same kind of attitude that I've seen before in in 99.99% of the boys who come into my store - the idea anything that isn't dominated by boys is for girls by default. Contrast that with the number of bachelor degrees in physics that were awarded to women in 2001 (23%).

I do not work for little more than minimum wage in the kid's section of a large bookstore because I am "naturally" better at dealing with kids or because I cannot cut it - tech wise - in a technical field. I work where I do mainly because books, unlike science, have never ceased to be safe, and I've always been on the nervous and shy side. While I do not blame sexism alone for constricting my choices, my logical brain cannot but boggle at the audacity of men who cry "cooties!" at the mere mention of anything not hypermasculine and then turn around and say that I'm not competitive enough. Seriously, watch how the slashdotters mock femininity by joking about "Hello Kitty lab coats" and then recoil in horror at their own invention.

Although, I must ask, was is so frightening or wrong about femininity in science and tech? My computer has a Strawberry Shortcake sticker on it - does that revoke my nerd status somehow? Is it so preposterous to want to be feminine and still expect to be taken seriously? Apparently so, for the only accepted reason for wanting more women in science is for the sake of the guys. Ha! As tekanji says: "We are not geeks for you!"

People who want to do this stuff will do it.

No, actually, for some reason even those of us that want to do this type of work often don't. Part of it is because, as Ms. PhD admits:

When I was a grad student, I had that girlie handicap that I was terrified of breaking things. I had gotten yelled at as a child for breaking a ceramic sugar bowl and just assumed everything else in life would be like that- better to stay away than to get yelled at.

I had that too as a kid. I loved figuring out how things worked, but I was extremely afraid of breaking something and getting in trouble or failing and disappointing everyone. And no, this isn't because I was less adventurous - my mind went everywhere my hands were afraid to. It was because I was a girl and I was taught to be careful. It was because I was a girl and so I thought that when I failed, I was a failure; if I succeeded, it was because of luck or outside help. I was especially sensitive to this during all those years of winning at science fairs; internally, I downplayed my own work and attributed most of it to my father's help. Boys, on the other hand, usually blame their failures on external factors and take credit for their successes. Most telling of all, I gave my dad credit for my success, but not for my brothers'.

There doesn't appear to be any significant roadblocks in their way that would prevent them from going further in a scientific career today than in the past.

Really? How about social factors? I don't just mean how kids are brought up, I mean the type of environment women pursuing advanced degrees in physics would likely face.

I chose to major in physics not only because of the subject, but because of the people in the department. In my experience, that holds true for a large number of undergrads. Why would anyone choose a path that would involve making them a permanent Smurfette over choosing a similar path where they would be more likely to be seen as simply a scientist? The truth is that physics no longer competes with home ec for girls attention, it competes with biochemistry, medicine, and a whole host of other scientific fields that, despite being remarkably similar, do not suffer from a lack of interested women - or a more balanced social environment.

I couldn't name a single mathematician as a kid. I had no role models...I didn't know a single mathematician or scientist.

Bullshit. Most boys could name their teachers, college professors, peers, and the guys in white coats on TV. Even my physics department was lacking in female role models - but it at least tried to make up for it by fostering strong ties between under- and upper- classwomen. That alone made all the difference in the world in my case. Watching those wonderful, confident young women accomplish so much, and then have them turn around and encourage me was essential to my success. Good academic work usually relies on good support from teachers, advisors, and peers. Women considering applying for a master's programs in physics at MIT rightly wonder if they will receive the same support as their male peers. Even in the absence of active discrimination, institutional sexism can be daunting, if not devastating.

When I began studying physics at MHC it was like I had been handed back a part of myself that I had lost. For some reason, I keep losing it again and again. I know this because I feel its absence like a missing limb, not because I look at the stats of women going into physics and think "oh, the horror!" (although, yes, it is pretty pathetic) - so the fact that people keep arguing that women like me do what we do only because of innate likes and dislikes frustrates me to no end. I am where I am and I do what I do in large part because being a women in physics, statistics, and computer science often requires that one be either a bit heroic - or one of the guys. I wish I could be the former, but I must admit I am quite often a coward, and I have absolutely no desire to be the latter.

Life is not binary. Sexism may not be the only thing responsible for my exodus from physics, but neither can it be fully absolved of culpability.

I Heart Amanda

not that that's anything new, of course

"The conservative worldview is pretty easy to describe, and while Lakoff shied away from the word, the proper word is “patriarchy”."

Yeah, I'd say that pretty much sums up the Dems inability to reframe the debate on, well, everything, dontcha think? If, even behind closed doors, they refuse to admit this simple fact, how, exactly, can they expect to come up with anything that is both concise and marketable in contrast to it?